Though the surprising success of extreme-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen may have made her the most attention-grabbing contestant in France’s recent elections, the 43 year-old National Front (FN) leader may soon find …

With just four days to go before the run-off in France’s presidential election, incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist front-runner François Hollande squared off in a raw-nerved television debate followed by millions of …

The electoral dilemma facing French presidential finalists Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande is as urgent as it is heavy with risk: how to lure the nearly 6.5 million voters who backed extreme-right candidate leader Marine …

French economic growth is slowing, unemployment is rising, Greece is still a risk to default, and the crisis-rocked euro—while somewhat stabilized of late—is still not out of the existential woods. Yet despite those burning …

It would be tempting to give French President Nicolas Sarkozy points for being consistent, except his incessant efforts to approximate the positions of surging extreme-right leader Marine Le Pen have proven so catastrophic it’s difficult not to wonder if the Elysée isn’t suffering from a deep and dysfunctional learning disability. …

The U.S. Republican party isn’t the only big conservative force in Western politics experiencing divisions between its traditionally moderate majority and a defiantly rightward-leaning wing. France’s ruling Union for a Popular Majority (UMP) is similarly witnessing public clashes between internal factions generated by efforts to …

French pundits who had feared an historically high score by the extreme-right National Front (FN) in Sunday’s second round of local polling breathed a sigh of relief when the party’s tally didn’t meet expectations. But while the FN’s 11% performance was well below its 15% first-round take—and nearly half of the 20% result some …